Moumouni Bonkoungou, Ousmane Badolo, Stanislas Nébié, Justin Tiendrebeogo, Mathurin Dodo, Thierry Ouedraogo, Youssouf Sawadogo, Danielle Burke, Bethany Arnold, William Brieger, and Gladys Tetteh of the USAID/Jhpiego Improving Malaria care Project and the Burkina Faso National Malaria Control Program presented implementation of the SMC program at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene as seen below.

Malaria remains a serious problem in Burkina Faso, a high burden country. Data from the 2016 Health Management Information System reports 9,852,097 malaria cases, and 4,440 malaria Deaths. Malaria accounts for 43.38% of Outpatient department visits, 44.63% of Hospitalizations and 21.84% Deaths. The burden of Malaria is highest during the months of July– October. During these months, malaria transmission is intense due to heavy rainfall and intensive biting behavior

Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) is the Intermittent administration of full treatment of antimalarial medicines to children under 5 (age 3-59 months) in areas of high seasonal transmission. It is an important malaria elimination strategy in the West African Sahel. Effective prevention intervention takes place where Malaria transmission is concentrated within a high transmission season. The bulk of clinical malaria cases (> 60%) occur during short rainy season over 4 months.

SMC Implementation started when Burkina Faso adopted SMC in 2013 as key part of National Malaria control strategy. SMC uses Sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine plus amodiaquine (SP+AQ). Four monthly doses are given to children 3?59 months old from July to October by community health workers and other volunteers.

The Improving Malaria Care (IMC) project is implemented by Jhpiego and funded by the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI). IMC supports National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) to improve quality of malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment. NMCP expanded SMC implementation to 7 districts in 2014 and then 59 districts in 2017.

Process of SMC Planning and Implementation in Boromo and Dano Districts in 2017 provides an example of how the program works. Treatment Coverage during the 2017 campaign treated 58,246 children in Boromo District and 50,007 children in Dano, or 97.3% of target population. The attached flow chart shows the Process of SMC Planning and Implementation in Boromo and Dano Districts in 2017. Microplanning is an important component. Reviewing lessons learned was crucial for planning SMC in 2018. The attached charts show a Reduction of Severe Malaria Cases in Boromo over the implementation period of SMC as well as a Reduction of Severe Malaria Cases in Dano.

These successes were or without challenges to SMC Scale-up in Burkina Faso. It is difficult access to some villages during the rainy season. Limiting SMC administration to children below 5 years of age makes some parents with older children unhappy, and they also demand the service. As of 2017 there was lack of resources to cover all districts.

In conclusion, the NMCP continues to scale up SMC to reach all eligible children with support of implementing partners/projects like IMC. Moving forward, the NMCP aims to increase efficiency of SMC campaigns, achieve effectiveness of intervention, mitigate known challenges, and anticipate new challenges.

https://t.co/yKKsmAEpSv @MinSanteRDC #Ebola 23 May 2019: Since beginning of epidemic, cumulative number of cases is 1,888, of which 1,800 confirmed 88 are probable. In total, there were 1,254 deaths (1,166 confirmed and 88 probable) and 492 people cured. 11 new confirmed cases